Practical AI

GANs are at the center of AI hype. However, they are also starting to be extremely practical and be used to develop solutions to real problems. Jakub Langr and Vladimir Bok join us for a deep dive into GANs and their application. We discuss the basics of GANs, their various flavors, and open research problems.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managing your infrastructure too easy. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 

Featuring:

• Jakub Langr – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Vladimir Bok – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Ian Goodfellow NeurIPS paper 2014
• GAN TTS

Books

• “GANs in Action” by Jakub Langr and Vladimir Bok

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Streamlit recently burst onto the scene with their intuitive, open source solution for building custom ML/AI tools. It allows data scientists and ML engineers to rapidly build internal or external UIs without spending time on frontend development. In this episode, Adrien Treuille joins us to discuss ML/AI app development in general and Streamlit. We talk about the practicalities of working with Streamlit along with its seemingly instant adoption by AI2, Stripe, Stitch Fix, Uber, and Twitter.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managing your infrastructure too easy. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• AI Demystified (FREE five-day mini-course) – Get an introduction to the most important concepts, types, and business applications for AI and Machine Learning. This course is 100% free. 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 

Featuring:

• Adrien Treuille – LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Eterna Game
• Streamlit
• Streamlit articles
• Awesome Streamlit
• R Shiny

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

There’s a lot of hype about knowledge graphs and AI-methods for building or using them, but what exactly is a knowledge graph? How is it different from a database or other data store? How can I build my own knowledge graph? James Fletcher from Grakn Labs helps us understand knowledge graphs in general and some practical steps towards creating your own. He also discusses graph neural networks and the future of graph-augmented methods.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managing your infrastructure too easy. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• AI Demystified (FREE five-day mini-course) – Get an introduction to the most important concepts, types, and business applications for AI and Machine Learning. This course is 100% free. 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 

Featuring:

• James Fletcher – LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Grakn Labs
• GraphSAGE
• Prologue
• Graph Nets (TensorFlow)
• Grakn KGLIB
• Grakn example projects and tutorials
• Grakn Blog

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Everyone is talking about it. OpenAI trained a pair of neural nets that enable a robot hand to solve a Rubik’s cube. That is super dope! The results have also generated a lot of commentary and controversy, mainly related to the way in which the results were represented on OpenAI’s blog. We dig into all of this in on today’s Fully Connected episode, and we point you to a few places where you can learn more about reinforcement learning.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – Check out DigitalOcean’s dedicated vCPU Droplets with dedicated vCPU threads. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• AI Demystified (FREE five-day mini-course) – Get an introduction to the most important concepts, types, and business applications for AI and Machine Learning. This course is 100% free. 

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• OpenAI’s result of solving a Rubik’s Cube with a robotic hand: 
  • Blog post
  • Paper
• Example push back on Twitter

Learning resources:

• OpenAI Gym Tutorial
• PyTorch RL Tutorial
• Tensorflow RL Tutorials

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

What’s the most practical of practical AI things? Data labeling of course! It’s also one of the most time consuming and error prone processes that we deal with in AI development. Michael Malyuk of Heartex and Label Studio joins us to discuss various data labeling challenges and open source tooling to help us overcome those challenges.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean Managed Kubernetes – DigitalOcean makes it super simple to launch a Kubernetes cluster in minutes. Developers can now run and scale container-based workloads with ease on the DigitalOcean platform. Learn more and get started for free with a $50 credit at do.co/changelog
• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon (Amsterdam 2020) – Get an additional 10% off EARLYBIRD registration pricing with the code KCEUGOTIME — ends November 8th! Learn more and register. 
• AI Demystified (FREE five-day mini-course) – Get an introduction to the most important concepts, types, and business applications for AI and Machine Learning. This course is 100% free. 

Featuring:

• Michael Malyuk – LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Heartex
• Label Studio

Books

• “Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming” by Peter Norvig

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Times series data is everywhere! I mean, seriously, try to think of some data that isn’t a time series. You have stock prices and weather data, which are the classics, but you also have a time series of images on your phone, time series log data coming off of your servers, and much more. In this episode, Anais from InfluxData helps us understand the range of methods and problems related to time series data. She also gives her perspective on when statistical methods might perform better than neural nets or at least be a more reasonable choice.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean now offers three managed databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon (San Diego) – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship Kubernetes community conference which gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities. Learn more and register — get 10% off with the code KCNAPRACTICALAI19 Feel free to use the Convince Your Boss letter in part or in full so you can your team can attend. 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 

Featuring:

• Anais Dotis-Georgiou – X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• InfluxData
• InfluxDB
• M-Competition benchmarks

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

We’ve mentioned ML/AI in the browser and in JS a bunch on this show, but we haven’t done a deep dive on the subject… until now! Victor Dibia helps us understand why people are interested in porting models to the browser and how people are using the functionality. We discuss TensorFlow.js and some applications built using TensorFlow.js

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean now offers three managed databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• Changelog Weekly – We track, log, and contextualize what’s happening in software throughout the week and deliver it directly to your inbox on Sunday mornings. Head to changelog.com/weekly to browse the archives, subscribe, and push the easy button on your continuing education. 
• Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. 

Featuring:

• Victor Dibia – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• data2vis
• TJbot
• TensorFlow.js
• Handtrack.js
• ConvNet Playground
• JS Party

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

The United States has blacklisted several Chinese AI companies working in facial recognition and surveillance. Why? What are these companies doing exactly, and how does this fit into the international politics of AI? We dig into these questions and attempt to do some live fact finding in this episode.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean now offers three managed databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 
• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. 

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• 1 million ethnic Uyghurs in China have been held in “re-education camps”
• Surge in Chinese research related to surveillance of Muslim minorities
• US AI Blacklist summary article from MIT Technology Review
• Hikvision 
  • Their website
  • Here’s what you need to know about Hikvision, the camera maker behind China’s mass surveillance system
  • China’s Hikvision Has Probably Filmed You
• iFlytek 
  • Their website
  • Why 500 Million People in China Are Talking to This AI
• Megvii 
  • Their website
  • Behind the Rise of China’s Facial-Recognition Giants
  • Megvii, the Chinese startup unicorn known for facial recognition tech, files to go public in Hong Kong
• Yitu 
  • Their website
  • AI Startup Yitu Seeks IPO on China’s New Tech Board
  • This Chinese facial recognition start-up can identify a person in seconds

Learning resources:

• TensorFlow 2.0 notebook

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Chris and Daniel talk with Keith Lynn, AlphaPilot Program Manager at Lockheed Martin. AlphaPilot is an open innovation challenge, developing artificial intelligence for high-speed racing drones, created through a partnership between Lockheed Martin and The Drone Racing League (DRL).

AlphaPilot challenged university teams from around the world to design AI capable of flying a drone without any human intervention or navigational pre-programming. Autonomous drones will race head-to-head through complex, three-dimensional tracks in DRL’s new Artificial Intelligence Robotic Racing (AIRR) Circuit. The winning team could win up to $2 million in prizes.

Keith shares the incredible story of how AlphaPilot got started, just prior to its debut race in Orlando, which will be broadcast on NBC Sports.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean now offers three managed databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 
• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. 

Featuring:

• Keith Lynn – LinkedIn
• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• AlphaPilot
• AlphaPilot – Lockheed Martin AI Drone Racing Innovation Challenge
• Lockheed Martin and Drone Racing League Announce 2019 AlphaPilot Teams
• Look ma, no hands: UCF arena to host fast-flying, autonomous drone racing in October
• Lockheed Martin
• Lockheed Martin - Wikipedia
• The Drone Racing League
• The Drone Racing League - Wikipedia
• Lockheed Martin - Twitter
• The Drone Racing League - Twitter
• NVIDIA - Twitter

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!

Chris and Daniel take some time to cover recent trends in AI and some noteworthy publications. In particular, they discuss the increasing AI momentum in the majority world (Africa, Asia, South and Central America and the Caribbean), and they dig into Hugging Face’s recent model distillation results.

Sponsors:

• DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean now offers three managed databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog. 
• All Things Open – Exploring open source, open tech, and the open web in the enterprise. Raleigh, NC — October 13-15, 2019 
• The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. 

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

AI in the majority world:

• NeurIPS publications by country
• “Best” universities according to the Times Higher Education
• ICLR in Ethiopia
• Google AI offices: 
  • Bangalore
  • Ghana
  • Beijing
• Deep Learning Indaba
• Southeast Asia Machine Learning School
• Facebook’s AI for India summit
• AI Singapore
• Indonesia AI research center

Artificial intelligence probes dark matter in the universe

DistilBERT from Hugging Face

Three People-Centered Design Principles for Deep Learning

Papers with code

Upcoming Events: 

• Register for upcoming webinars here!